But he hadn't tried to kill her. Not even when he'd had a good chance, outside on the street. Would he be likely to change his mind and try to kill her now?
She stopped trembling abruptly, buoyed up by the thought, as if a great white wave of hope and reassurance had burst all about her, carrying away every vestige of her fear.
A psychopathic killer wouldn't have held back that way. The presence of others would have added fuel to the flames. He'd have realized at once that there were other victims right at hand and would have killed and killed again, in an uncontrollable frenzy, his guilt feelings, his secret desire to be caught and punished, making him welcome the added danger and risk.
And if he was the other kind, the completely sane kind—were murderers ever completely sane?—concerned about saving his own skin, wouldn't he have shot her on the street, the instant he saw that she was heading for the restaurant? Wouldn't he have shot her in front of the darkened store, the store she'd darted past with her heart in her mouth, and not even waited for her to fall to the pavement? Just turning and fleeing, knowing it would take the police minutes to arrive, time enough to put him beyond reach of the law for a few days, perhaps forever. The risk he'd taken in Lathrup's office had been ten times as great.
She was feeling relaxed now, and a little light-headed. Almost all of the fear had left her. It was almost as if the two rough-looking men at the counter had been right about her, as if she'd taken three or four drinks of straight whiskey, the kind that burned your throat—she'd never in her life taken more than two cocktails—and was feeling the effects of it.
He came into the restaurant so quietly, gently pushing the door open and advancing so slowly toward her that for an instant he seemed remote, unreal, like a mist-enveloped figure in a very tenuous, not in the least frightening dream.
Then stark terror whipped through her again. Her hand went to her throat and all of the blood drained from her face.
He was carrying something under his left arm—a black, square something, much flatter than a briefcase, with no handle. But she wasn't looking at what he carried. She was looking at the bulge in his right coat pocket and at the half-inch of white wrist protruding above the pocket, the even whiter shirt-cuff pushed back, the hand itself completely invisible, buried in the pocket, as if the fingers were tightly clasped around whatever it was that made the pocket bulge.
She wanted to scream but couldn't, and when she tried to rise a great heaviness seemed to grow up inside of her, to spread and spread until it enveloped her entire body and turned her into a leaden woman sitting there.
Was the gun that caused the bulge—how could she doubt that it was a gun?—about to go off, or did he merely mean to frighten her?